Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

8. Media Agencies (USAGM, CPB) · Notable

Keep the USAGM Firewall Regulation revoked

Done

239 8. Media Agencies (USAGM, CPB)

“Such weak oversight, alien to any other large media network or news organization—particularly one derivative of U.S. foreign policy and national security goals—was erroneously enshrined in a document known as the Firewall Regulation. … It ran counter to the law, including the Smith–Mundt Act, and it was harmful to the agency itself and to the foreign policy and national security goals of the U.S. government.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    A continuation ask - the Mandate condemns the Firewall Regulation and asks that it stay gone - so it is leveled under playbook 3b's preserve rule, `done` while the thing continues and `reversed` if it stops, and it never carries the Already-true flag (ADR 0003 as amended 2026-09-01). The regulation has not returned. It was repealed on 2020-12-10 by USAGM's own final rule "Repeal of Regulation Entitled Firewall and Highest Standards of Professional Journalism" (Federal Register document 2020-24736), which undid the rule the Broadcasting Board of Governors had published on 2020-06-15 (document 2020-12696), and a Federal Register agency search returns twelve documents for the U.S. Agency for Global Media across the agency's whole history: the 2020 repeal is its last rule, and its only rulemaking inside the window is a 2026-05-29 proposed rule on federal financial assistance. The negative reaches USAGM rulemaking, which is the only form the regulation could take; it says nothing about internal agency practice. The dated in-window action closest to the object runs the same way rather than against it: Executive Order 14238 of 2025-03-14 names the U.S. Agency for Global Media and directs that its non-statutory components and functions "be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law", with the agency reduced to "the minimum presence and function required by law" - the opposite of restoring a non-statutory firewall rule.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • Corrected 2026-09-01. This item was marked Already true with a not started Status. That marking is wrong under the rule as amended: the ask as recorded is “keep the Firewall Regulation revoked”, a continuation ask, and the rule as amended 2026-09-01 says Already true “never applies to a preserve, continue or refrain-from ask, which takes the preserve rule instead”. The item is done under that rule and would become reversed if the regulation were reissued. That moves it out of the Already true bucket and into the Status counts.
  • A judgment call: the Quote itself carries no imperative — it is the Mandate’s criticism of a rule already repealed when the Mandate was written — so a reader who takes the recorded action, “rescind”, as the ask rather than the title would keep the Already true marking and leave the Status at not started. The title is the site’s own statement of the ask and it says keep, so the preserve rule governs.
  • The repeal documents predate 2025-01-20, so they cannot be cited as Evidence for a Status event. The two documents, found in the Federal Register by agency: under the United States Agency for Global Media, 2020-12-10, Rule, 2020-24736, “Repeal of Regulation Entitled Firewall and Highest Standards of Professional Journalism”; and under the Broadcasting Board of Governors, 2020-06-15, Rule, 2020-12696, “Firewall and Highest Standards of Professional Journalism”.
  • Distinguish the regulation from the firewall: usagm.gov/who-we-are/firewall/ still describes a “statutorily mandated firewall” resting on the International Broadcasting Act, which the repeal of the rule did not touch and which this Quote does not ask to remove.
Action
rescind
Object
USAGM Firewall Regulation
ID
618